You can now build and upgrade a Neighborhood in Empires & Allies. Similar to the Neighborhoods in CityVille, this structure will allow for the storage of up to 15 different homes, regardless of their type. You'll start out with a first floor that can hold five homes, and must then upgrade the building twice in order to hold all 15 homes in the end.

You'll gain item storage just as soon as you place this Neighborhood in your Empire, as four building slots are available from the start. From there, you'll need to ask friends to unlock the fifth slot in the block. After that, you'll need to start collecting building materials to unlock Block 2, and eventually Block 3, until your Neighborhood has reached its full potential.

Unfortunately, you can only have a single Neighborhood in your Empire as of this writing, but it should be enough to allow you to progress your game forward quite a bit with all of the land you'll save.